hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such
evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was
given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born
when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the
world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of
such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the
heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods.
It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been
celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a
matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their
accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had
nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable
to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles,
or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The
Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more,
and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the
story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the
Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A
direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the
reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that
then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality,
which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary
succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes
changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods
for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything.
The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been